Anxious Autumn

On 25 March 2020 New Zealand went into lockdown to prevent the spread of the coronavirus Covid-19. For the next five weeks our ‘team of five million’ endured the unprecedented experience of being required to stay home to save lives. The lockdown was different for everyone – for some it was a reprieve from ordinary life, even a holiday; for others it was a challenging, at times harrowing, experience. Anxiety, boredom, fear, frustration and loneliness became daily companions for many.

Anxious Autumn tells just a small part of this nationwide story: how one couple in a provincial city lived through a strange and historic period, when the traffic stopped, the skies cleared of pollution and the natural world reasserted itself.